In the world of television, the people are represented
by two separate yet equally important groups: the writers and producers of
hour-long crime dramas, and the viewers, who watch said dramas. These are
their stories.

Be Careful Out There
Who Says You Can't Kick Ass in High Heels:
The Pantsuit and Gender Equityby Andreanna Ditton

Once upon a time, woman had integral roles on cop shows.

The pre-pantsuit days.

They were secretaries; they were victims; they were hookers and love interests
and reporters. They weren't cops, though. Oh sure, Angie Dickinson was Police
Woman and Charlie's Angels karate-kicked many a bad guy into submission,
but they weren't real cops. They weren't in the office with the bad coffee
and the ink and sweat smells and the gun oil and the shifty chairs and the
hunt and peck approach to filling out a report. They weren't Joe Friday or
Jim Reed or Starsky„even though he did have pretty hair.

Then came the '80's and women in uniform. But no beat cop ever wore
her badge with as much cleavage as TJ Hooker's Officer Stacey.
And while Hunter touted DeeDee McCall as a tough-as-nails cop,
our first glimpse of McCall, a dressed-up and pimped-out cop playing a
call girl, was the epitome of an '80's cop show clich³. It was a case
of all tell, and very little show. Not that it mattered, because
DeeDee McCall was 100 percent sidekick. The show wasn't called
Hunter and McCall, but it might as well have been called
Vehicle for Former Football Star Fred Dryer.

And I don't even want to talk about those girl cops on Miami
Vice„ one slept with Crockett in the first episode and spent much
of the series mooning after him, while the other ended up sleeping
with Tubbs. True to its name, Miami Vice offered viewers
episode after episode of the female officers dressed up and pimped
out, riding that trope all the way down Miami's seedy beaches, Elvis
yapping at their heels with his pointy crocodile teeth.

That's why when Lucy Bates hit the TV in our house it was a
revelation. In my house, snark about TV was snark before snark was
snark. My dad personally coined the term Battlestar
Godawfulica, and I watched Hunter in secret at my
grandparents, who were adoring and happy to thwart my father. They
also let me watch Matt Houston, so perhaps a little filtering
would have been a good thing. But back to Lucy Bates.

Lucy was a real female cop. She had bad hair and an ill-fitting
uniform, blending seamlessly with the lovely, gritty ensemble drama
that was Hill Street Blues. Technically, Hill Street
predated Miami Vice and Hunter but the lasting effect of
Hill Street's female portrayals is more apparent in later TV
than in its contemporaries. Officer/Sergeant Lucy Bates was committed
to her job. She fumbled occasionally, had her fair of issues and was
in love with her partner, but it was an embarrassing sort of
affection, an unrequited and wordless thing that didn't interfere in
the way she did her job. Lucy was the uniform, the girl in blue, not a
sex symbol or a joke, but a female cop with a fully formed
personality.

As Homicide: Life on the Streets was the natural heir to
Hill Street, so Lucy Bates gave way to Detective Kay Howard,
with her biggish hair and bad suits. Howard might have been the only
whiff of estrogen in that shabbily furnished police station in
Baltimore but her character was never the token girl on the screen.
Howard had her fair share of issues, and maybe she didn't have
Pembleton's flair or Bayliss's compassion but she was competent cop in
her own right, with the perfect solve record to show for it.

The legion of female cops currently coasting our airwaves owes a debt
to their predecessors, both in terms of roles and wardrobes. It's hard
to imagine Olivia Benson in a miniskirt, although less difficult to
picture Catherine Willows showing some skin. Their presence can be
traced and analyzed through clothing as easily as through the
evolution of sexual stereotypes. While women lost the short skirts,
they may have also lost their unique femininity, descending into a new
brand of stereotype.

The last Tahari suit skirt I remember seeing on a female member of the
TV Law Enforcement community was on one Dana Scully, late of The
X-Files. And, I remember distinctly, she wore it well. Since
then, we've been living the era of the pantsuit, clothing far more
suited to police work than high heels and pantyhose, but nonetheless
pantsuit has come to equal girl cop in the same way that a single
white glove equals Michael Jackson.

Law and Order: Criminal Intent's Detective Alexandra Eames,
Cold Case's Lilly Rush, Numb3rs' Terry Lake and all of
the ladies of the various CSI's wear their pantsuits proudly.
While Catherine Willows may have invested in a super secret brand of
Scotchguard, for the most part, the clothing seems to fit the job.
It's professional, it's moveable and it takes women out of the realm
of sex object and puts them firmly into the world of squad member.
However, unlike Kay Howard's not so attractive neutrals and Scully's
early ill-fitting, pre-Los Angeles and a non-Canadian wardrobe
mistress days, the current crop of pantsuits is designed to turn all
the female cops into clones of each other. I may know the names of
the actresses in the various procedurals, but I can't seem to remember
the names of the characters they play: they're that interchangeable.
They've got the same fitted button down shirts or stretch jersey long
sleeved T's, the same tailored pants and jackets„the same bloody
haircuts for that matter„to the extent that it seems to me that we've
only traded one uniform-based clich³ for another. Has the pantsuit
given us gender equity, or is it merely a more professional way to
relegate the female detectives to second string?

Everybody in pantsuits!

More attention is paid to the female police officers now than in the past.
They aren't spurned love interests and they aren't Girl Fridays. They are
cops in their own right, but there's still the hint of inequality, cleverly
disguised by superior tailoring. Instead of allowing women individual characteristics,
the pantsuit has masked their femininity. While ramping up the professionalism,
it has simultaneously cloaked many of the female characters with a host of
pre-conceived backgrounds and identities, rarely contradicted by the writers.
Within the context of the police procedural, it is difficult enough to establish
unique characterization. With the emphasis on uniformity, the pantsuit becomes
attribute as much as the club and lion skin identifies Hercules in ancient
statuary. It robs these women of the chance to express personality, femininity,
individuality. They don't have the liberty of the high heels or the scuffed
tennis shoes, the chance to show an unexpected streak of vanity in a well
cut skirt or a lack of such in random, shabby clothing. The pantsuit certainly
doesn't distract the viewer, doesn't lead to ogling or lewd comments Æ for
the most part Æ but it also denies the chance to infuse these women with any
sort of deeper traits, with any hints of quirk or deliberate conformity.

The hard drinking, relationship phobic, competent and passionate
detective is a new kind of female cop, but this is hardly a case of
individuating the women in these roles. Yeah, Scully wore ugly
pantsuits and high heels, but she was fully realized in her
personality. Lucy Bates wore her blue uniform, wore her job on her
body, but she wore it proudly. The uniform didn't hide her identity,
it set her apart in the largely male world, not exactly tailored for
her body, just as the job and the environment was not exactly tailored
to her gender. Kay Howard wore a skirt suit to court, and it was just
as ugly as the beige pantsuits„ Kay inhabited her existence fully,
heard ghosts and had doubts and was good at her job and boinked the
DA. Lilly Rush may be the only female detective in her Philadelphia
homicide division, but she fits in so well as a driven women that
there's very little in the character that distinguishes hers as a
girl. Her clothing shows that while she may be the lone female, she's
part of the process, part of the establishment. It's a way to dismiss
the complications and conflicts she deals with as a woman in a
predominantly man's world. If she looks enough like the men, takes
away character, sexuality, individualism, we can read the conflict
into our history of TV and never have to deal with it outright. In
the same way, it's hard to see pretty and petite Sabrina Lloyd, barely
serving a purpose on Numb3rs but with her pantsuit is in full
effect. It seems a shame that the girl who fully inhabited Sports
Night's Natalie Hurley and her short skirts and leggings is
relegated to supporting Rob Morrow as a sexless sidekick, competent or
not.

The pantsuit is not only taking away from female individuation, it is
robbing the women of their sexuality. They can't exactly be girls
when they're limited to one particular style of dress that carries
with it the same range of messages that the '80's power suits and big
shoulder pads did. The suits, and the characters, scream, "Yeah, I'm
a girl, but not too much of a girl. I'm transcending old gender roles
while creating a whole new set of them." I'm all for gender equity,
all for losing the clich³s and I'm certainly happy to see women
represented as partners and bosses and coroners, but I'm not sure that
we've achieved real equity, not sure that we aren't robbing these
female characters of the chance to inhabit the roles as women with
their own unique strengths, weaknesses and fashion sense.